


Kicks Like a Sleep Twitch

by Aylwyyn228



Series: Don't Put Down Your Guns Yet [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Protective Hank Anderson, Temporary Character Death, because connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21536341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aylwyyn228/pseuds/Aylwyyn228
Summary: There was something wrong with the whole thing, he’d known that on the road, but it was only laying in the dark later that he managed to put his finger on it.It wasn’t right that a machine should struggle to survive like that, and it wasn’t right that it should beg for help. But maybe you could put that down to latent programming. After all, androids weren’t cheap to produce, you’d want to program bit of self-preservation, if only so they didn’t go destroying themselves by accident.No, all of that Hank could buy. It was some weird freaky shit, but he could buy it.But a machine shouldn’t have fear in its eyes like that.Or; why did Hank start to change his mind?
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Series: Don't Put Down Your Guns Yet [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569940
Comments: 26
Kudos: 356
Collections: Detroit: Good Stuff





	Kicks Like a Sleep Twitch

Hank was panting by the time he caught up with Connor, next to the fence. Lungs burning from the chase. He grabbed its shoulder. “Hey, where are you goin’?”

“I can’t let them get away!”

“They won’t.” Hank coughed a little, doubled over to catch his breath. “They’ll never make it to the other side.”

“I can’t take that chance!”

He caught movement and grabbed out at Connor’s arm by instinct. “You will get yourself killed!” He felt the android struggle. “Do not go after ‘em, Connor! That’s an order!”

The android shrugged out of Hank's grasp, and what did he expect really? He couldn't have held back a real boy thirty years younger than him. What chance did he have with a machine? 

Connor was up and over the chain link fence in a heartbeat, sliding down the bank.

"Connor, goddammit!"

And good Christ, this was insane!

Connor tripped on the very first barrier, sprawling out on the road. It leapt up without looking to continue the chase. Hank daren't even shout anymore. He was holding his breath. Didn't want to break Connor's concentration. 

It stumbled, clipped by a truck, which sent it spinning back into the other lanes.

Hank’s heart was beating out of his throat.

And then for a miracle second, Connor had made it to the median. 

"Connor! Wait there!" 

Hank stepped back, looking up at the fence. No way in hell was he going to be able to vault it like the damn android had. 

He spotted a small metal box, an electrical breaker or something, pressed up against the fence. He started sprinting. 

"Connor! Wait for me!" 

He stopped, one foot on the box, as he looked up and took in what was happening. 

Connor and the android girl were grappling on the road.

Before he could even shout, the girl shoved Connor in the chest. He staggered backwards awkwardly. Hank could see him twisting his weight, trying to get his balance back. But Hank saw what would happen the second before it did. 

Connor was there and then he wasn't, with only the flash of his body going under the truck, and the screech of metal on metal. 

"Oh, Jesus Christ..." 

The little girl and the android had reached the other side. They barely glanced back at the carnage they'd caused.

But Hank’s brain wasn't processing right. It took another second for the dark lump on the roadside to condense into a human shape. 

Connor had been thrown halfway back onto the median. He was on his side, his legs splayed out oddly, broken. Hank thought he might just throw up. 

Connor spasmed brutally, and then Hank realised that he was struggling to push himself up.

"Connor! Stay still!" 

He levered himself up over the fence and thudded heavily into the ground. He tried to turn it into a half-assed roll but really just went over on his ankle. 

“Shit. Shit!”

He forced himself up. He was panting. Had a pain in his chest. 

The traffic on the road was beginning to slow a little, servers relaying the message that there had been an incident and bringing the traffic to a controlled stop ready for the clean-up crew. 

It meant that it wasn't total suicide for him to try and cross. He had to weave a little, flashed his badge at a couple of horns from people who'd taken manual control when the warning had pinged up. By the time he reached the grass in the centre, he was pretty certain he was having an actual heart attack.

He’d crossed a little further up the road than Connor which meant he got a perfect view as he sprinted back down to him. "Stop moving, Connor, for Christ's sake!" 

Connor was twitching, hand spasming against the grass, trying to pull himself off the road, out of danger of any wide running trucks. Hank grabbed beneath his arms and dragged him backwards to the safety of the median.

His brain scratched to a stop from the panicky ‘officer down, officer down’ monologue as he caught up with the blue blood across the side of Connor’s face. He fell backwards onto his ass.

Right. Android.

"Connor? You hear me?” He nudged at the android’s shoulder until it rolled onto its back. “Oh, Jesus.”

Its eyes were open but unfocused, mouth jerking. There was a clicking noise from somewhere inside its throat, like a computer someone had poured coffee over. The side of its head was half caved in, synthetic skin and metal stripped away to reveal trailing wires and flashing lights. Blue blood was dribbling out of its mouth and nose, staining its shredded suit. 

The LED on the side of its forehead was glowing bright red.

Hank didn't know what to do. 

It jerked suddenly, spasming and Hank could see its hand pushing weakly against the ground, trying to sit up. 

"Hey, kid! Kid, stop! It’s alright!” Why the hell did they have to make it look so young? “Connor! Hey!”

Its eyes jerked up to meet his.

"Lieu... lieu..." Its voice sounded tinny, like it was coming out of an old speaker. "Lieut... lieut..."

And Hank couldn't help it. He knew it was just looping, circuits firing randomly but it sounded just a little too much like begging. 

He pressed his hand against the android's hair. "Shush, kid, it's alright." 

Connor's hand snapped up, grabbed at his shoulder. Hard. Hank knew he would have a perfect handprint across that shoulder tomorrow.

“Easy, lie still.”

“I… I need… help…”

Something in Hank’s gut twisted.

Connor was trying to sit up again. Hank could actually hear the motors in his abdomen whirring and grinding.

There was something horribly disturbing about it. Like something in the kid’s head was telling him there was still danger.

Hank had seen it before. Of course. He’d seen a lot of terrible shit. Tweakers running five blocks while they were bleeding out from gunshots. People walking out of wrecks to die on the road ten minutes later from a brain haemorrhage. Like their bodies were giving up on them, but their heads hadn’t got the memo.

Living things didn’t like giving up on living.

But a machine shouldn’t _do_ that.

Hank suddenly remembered the android with the little girl, taking on six lanes because it was better than whatever she thought was waiting in custody.

“Hank…”

He looked down at Connor again. There were speckles of blue blood decorating the inside of his lips.

He pulled the kid up a little bit higher, so he wasn’t straining so much. It made his head loll unnaturally, like his neck was broken. Hank hefted him up a bit more, against his chest. “I got you, Connor.”

“Hank… I… I… help…”

“It’s on its way,” Hank lied, because really, what the fuck else was he supposed to do? “Help’s comin’. Just lie still. I got you.”

He was trying really, really hard not to think of the last time he’d done this.

Connor opened his mouth a couple of times. His eyes became fixed again.

“Connor?” Hank jostled him a little. “You hear me, kid?”

His hand slid limply from where it’d been clutching at Hank’s jacket and his LED went off. As if that wasn’t enough, Hank could see right into his goddamn brain, could see as the flashing lights died one by one.

As if that was it. As if half a dozen flashing lights were all it took to pretend be a person.

“Connor?” He said again, absolutely fucking unnecessarily.

The kid didn’t answer.

Of course he fucking didn’t.

***

“It’s a mess, Hank.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

Hank was chewing at his nails. He wondered if there were bits of thirium beneath them. It’d long since evaporated off his clothes, as Connor had promised, but the kid had said he could pick it up long after humans had stopped being able to see it.

He thought about it, and then took his hand out of his mouth.

Fowler always looked as if he was sending him to the principal’s office. “CyberLife are sending a replacement.”

“Ah, no! Jeff, come on! Not another one!”

“It is out of my hands, Hank. You know that. I know you don’t like workin’ with them-”

“I don’t wanna see another partner die in front of me!”

Fowler raised his eyebrows. “Die?”

“You know what I mean.”

He’d had to wait for the CyberLife people to come pick Connor’s body up. Well, he didn’t have to, but the alternative was leaving him a broken pile of limbs on the roadside, and that just seemed wrong.

The techs had joked, when they’d finally arrived, nodding at his stained suit, said he needn’t have picked all the parts up outta the road.

Hank had kinda wanted to punch them.

He’d wanted to punch them even more once he’d seen them throw Connor in the back of their van. He’d landed with a thump, legs splayed at broken angles again. His neck had twisted back, pressed at right angles to the side of the pick-up.

Hank clenched his fist just thinking about it.

“Look,” Fowler clasped his hands neatly on the desk, “go home, get some sleep, deal with this tomorrow.”

Hank huffed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”

“Home, Hank. I better not find you in the bar later. I get shit from Marie every time, man. I do not want shit from Marie.”

“I said I’m goin’.”

***

He did go home.

It didn’t stop him drinking.

Granted, he drank every night, but he hit it hard even for him. He only called it a night when Sumo started whining at him from the floor, wanting to know why they weren’t asleep yet.

Even then, he’d laid awake, exhausted but not drunk enough to pass out. Sumo’s warm solid weight making his feet go steadily numb.

Because he couldn’t stop thinking about the kid. Kept seeing him crumple as the truck hit, seeing his neck broken in the pick-up, because no one cared enough to treat his body with care.

He wondered if the kid had seen it coming. He remembered it like he was watching a slow-motion replay of a ballgame, thanks to an overactive imagination and a healthy dose of PTSD to boot. But maybe in the heat of the moment it’d been too fast to process. Maybe Connor’s attention had been fixed on the android escaping, on the mission and nothing else.

Maybe that truck had struck him down like the hand of God, and he hadn’t seen a damn thing coming.

He sure as shit knew about it afterwards though, and _that_ Hank really didn’t want to think about.

There was something wrong with the whole thing, he’d known that on the road, but it was only laying in the dark later that he managed to put his finger on it.

It wasn’t right that a machine should struggle to survive like that, and it wasn’t right that it should beg for help. But maybe you could put that down to latent programming. After all, androids weren’t cheap to produce, you’d want to program bit of self-preservation, if only so they didn’t go destroying themselves by accident.

No, all of that Hank could buy. It was some weird freaky shit, but he could buy it.

But a machine shouldn’t have fear in its eyes like that.

A goddamn toaster didn’t comprehend its own mortality. 

It wasn’t _right_.

And if that wasn’t a thought to keep a man awake at night.

***

So that was how he found himself inhaling coffee, ordering a cheeseburger for breakfast and swearing for the five hundredth time he was never drinking again.

Then he turned around and saw a fucking ghost.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. It took me a while to find you.”

Connor said it like everything was normal. Hank looked him up and down and there wasn’t a fucking mark on him. “Are you gonna come back like this every time you get killed?”

Connor cocked his head. “My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, but CyberLife transferred its memory and sent me to replace it. This should not affect the investigation.”

Hank became aware that his mouth was open. “Not affect the investigation? I just saw you get hit by a truck! Now you come back like if nothing happened?”

Connor frowned ever so slightly. “A machine was destroyed. And another machine was sent to replace it. I don’t understand what’s bothering you.”

Hank just stared at him. And Connor stared back, like it was him that was being irrational. Like he was overreacting.

“Okay, fuck you.” He grabbed his burger off the side. “Fuck you.”

Fucking androids giving him a heart attack and then coming back from the fucking dead.

“I just got a report of a suspected deviant. It’s a few blocks away. We should go take a look.”

Christ, he wished this kid would stop following him. With that stupid fucking earnest look on his face as well.

The kid looked him up and down for a second, and then stepped back. “I’ll let you finish your meal.”

He turned and walked away, with a fucking spring in his step like he hadn’t been smeared across the tarmac twelve hours ago.

Hank threw his burger in the trash.

He really, really wasn’t fucking hungry.

***

When they were in the car, Hank looked across at Connor. “I ask you something?”

“I believe you already did, Lieutenant.”

“Alright, smartass. Look, do you remember anything about yesterday?”

Connor was staring straight ahead, but Hank could see his eyes moving like he was tracking something only he could see.

“I remember that the AX400 fled across the highway. You attempted to stop me from pursuing.” Connor turned to face him. “I assume that you were unsuccessful.”

If Hank didn’t know any better, he’d say that Connor was trying to make a joke.

“Nothing else?”

Connor did that strange tracking thing with his eyes again. “There is usually some data loss with the transfer.”

Hank just grunted. Figured.

“Is it important?”

“What?”

Connor was still looking at him. “The information I’ve lost. If it’s important to the investigation, I can return to CyberLife for decommissioning. It may be that the data can be recovered externally.”

It took Hank a second to make sense of that. “What? No! No one’s gettin’ decommissioned! Jesus, just forget it.”

Connor just nodded, that strange look on his face that said humans were baffling.

Hell, maybe humans were baffling, but Connor sure as shit had got it a little more yesterday, before…

Hank had a thought, a couple of puzzle pieces slotting into place.

They had androids turning deviant across the city, with no links between them that they could see. Murders of humans. An android who’d had the hell beaten out of it for months. Another who was going be replaced, deactivated.

And now the girl from yesterday, whose owner had been a piece of shit by all accounts.

What if that was all it took?

One second of fear, of rage. Desperation. A spark that said you didn’t want to be extinguished. Every goddamn sentient thing on the planet wanted to keep living, even he did, most days.

And maybe it was that desire to keep on existing… maybe that was enough to make you alive.

With that, Hank’s thoughts turned dark. Because whatever that said about souls, it meant that deviancy wasn’t some fragment of broken code, it was innate.

It was potential.

It was _life_ , pure and simple.

Stamped out and pushed down and overruled. But _there_ , nonetheless.

He glanced across at Connor, still and silent in the passenger seat. His face was blank, and empty. Hank wondered if he was making a report to CyberLife in his head, or if the ‘data transfer’ had wiped out a bit of _Connor_ as well.

Because there was one thing he was sure of, if their prize prototype had found a chink in their control as he lay there dying, there was no way in Hell CyberLife were going to let him keep it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and say hi on Tumblr https://aylwyyn228.tumblr.com/


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